Rebuilding New York’s World Trade Center District involves working with a complex and sometimes conflicting set of demands: on the one hand creating a civic space that is beautiful, fully accessible and complements the new iconic buildings and 9/11 Memorial, while on the other incorporating high levels of security and subsurface infrastructure, including utilities and public transit. From the start of the project, the sense of openness and accessibility in this high profile civic space was a key priority. Delivering a new kind of security aesthetic, designs are unobtrusive and create a calming and ordered public space. To visually unify the entire 6.5-hectare site, the public realm has been designed as an elegant skin with a streetscape in a simple and complementary palette of dark gray, midtone and white granite. This is the base from which the new buildings rise and it acts as the public face of the scheme, including the introduction of a new public park.
